Wednesday, June 21, 2006

In my Mind

I have been feeling the duality of my essence lately. I used to feel this way alot back when I was younger but I overcome and came to terms with it a few years ago... but I dont think I truly overcame it all since it still lingers within my psyche.

I remember taking a course on African American Narratives and in that class we read DuBois who wrote about the Negros' double consciousness and Ellison who spoke about their invisiblity... Reading their works was a powerful moment in my own short life because it helped me key in on what was afflicting many Muslims in the West; especially my own experiance as a Muslim in the West.

For instance, the if you take the word Negro out the second word of this statement and insert Muslim... It would make just as much sense...

""the [Negro (originally)] Muslim is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second sight in this American world, -a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always ooking at one's self through the eyes of others."

Likewise also consider Ellison's statement...

""It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man! "

I as a Muslim, I had rendered myself invisible within my own psyche... even now; after the answers have come to me its sort of odd feeling in my mind as well. I never expected the after-thought effect to so subtle... and simple. I guess I was always looking for the initial high like it would be drug but didnt like the low points of fluctuating eman.

About Me

"It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself."